Tuna tail atop of Wells Harbor Christmas tree sparks debate: Is it festive or gross?

WELLS, Maine — There’s something fishy about the Christmas tree currently on display at Wells Harbor — not in a suspicious way, that is, but in a literal one.

At the top of the tree, where usually a star or angel sits, there is a dried, cut-off tail of a dead tuna. The decorative touch touched off a spirited discussion on the “Wells Maine” Facebook page earlier this week.

“Festive or sinister,” Judy Plouffe, a member of the page, posed to others in a post.

Plouffe explained she recently had visited the harbor, where the tree, made by high school students and comprised of painted buoys, glitters in the sun at the end of a dock. She said she chatted with other people at the harbor and asked them what they thought about the tuna tail.

She claimed that some people thought it was sinister to add a dead body part to a tree intended to be festive. She said others thought the tail-topped tree looked like a Knight of Ni — a reference any fan of the Monty Python comedy troupe would catch.

The post generated more than 350 comments in three days. Most of them were negative, with commentators describing the tail as “odd” and “gross” and calling for the tree to return to the way it was during its first three holiday seasons at the harbor.

At least one commentator thought the matter was much ado about nothing.

“Maine is a state where bunches of residents make a living on the ocean,” he wrote. “Toughen up. It’s a fish tail, not a human head.”

The tail did have its share of fins — er, fans.

“I love it!” wrote another. “This is hilarious.”

“As someone who painted multiple buoys for that tree, I think it’s fine,” said Chaya Lord-Rozeff, who was one of several students who had worked on the display years ago.

“Symbolic of the working waterfront,” said Mike Johnson Jr.

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Precisely, Harbor Master Michael Yorke would tell you.

“It does represent a working harbor, just like the buoys do,” Yorke said during an interview on Dec. 6. “We could have put a lobster up there.”

A lobster sits on top of the Christmas tree at Dock Square in Kennebunkport.

Yorke collaborated with the art department at Wells High School to create the tree four years ago. This holiday season is the first time a tail has been attached to its top. Yorke said someone approached him with the idea, and he liked it.

Yorke and his crew were taken aback when they learned the tail was going over less than swimmingly on social media.

“Everybody involved was very shocked that it took a negative turn,” Yorke said.

According to Yorke, the tail of a tuna is the first thing lopped off when caught by a fisherman. Often, the tail is then dried and kept as a keepsake. Think of the tail as being like the antlers of a buck that a hunter will have mounted on his wall, Yorke added.

“It’s a very common Downeast tradition,” he said, including at Wells Harbor.

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Yorke said there are dried-out tuna tails posted on the nearby shellfish building and elsewhere.

“They’re everywhere,” he said. “They’re nothing new. They’ve been nailed up in Wells Harbor forever.”

Yorke had a suggestion for anyone who wants to see something other than a tail atop the tree.

“You can look at it and think of angel wings,” he said.

Or take another approach, as another suggested on the Facebook post that started it all.

“I think everybody will have their own opinion,” she wrote. “And people should just get on with their lives.”

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Tuna tail tops Wells Harbor Christmas tree, sparks debate